Hair Myths Decoded

Busting those haircare hacks

We’ve all heard hair hacks, whether it’s grandma’s advice on regular brushing, locker room wisdom, or a click bait article with a seemingly simple tress solution. Advice often seems contradictory and it’s difficult to know which pearl of wisdom should be trusted.

Noughty is all about separating fact from fiction with a hefty dose of common sense and science. So, we’ve sifted through the old wives’ tales of haircare, to bring you facts you can trust.

So, let’s play a game of fact or fiction.

1. Hair grows faster if you cut it regularly.Hair grows from follicles in your scalp. Nothing you do to the ends is going to speed up growth. Regular trims do get rid of the split ends and breakage that can make your hair look thin and past its prime. A trim roughly every 8 weeks will keep on top of any splits or breaks, leaving your hair looking healthier, thicker and therefore longer.

2. 100 brushstrokes = healthy hairThis is mostly fiction. The theory behind this old chestnut is that brushing distributes the scalp’s protective natural oil further down the hair shaft and stimulates the hair to produce more. The reality is that over-brushing is a recipe for broken or damaged strands of hair. Instead, stimulate the scalp with a gentle fingertip massage and only brush your hair as needed, using a wide-toothed comb or soft bristle brush.

3. Oily hair? Skip conditioning.Oily hair is caused by the amount of sebum your scalp produces. As a general rule, the finer your hair is, the more sebaceous glands you have, so the more oil you produce. It has nothing to do with whether your hair needs conditioning or not. You can, however, make your hair oilier by using a conditioner not suited to your hair type, or applying it incorrectly. If you have an oily scalp, only apply conditioner and treatments to the ends of your hair.

4. Change is essential: shampoos stop workingA shampoo will cleanse the same on the 100th time as the first time you used it. What does change is your hair and the challenges you put it through. Water hardness, coloring, seasons, heat styling, skipping trips to the hairdresser, moving to a city with more air pollution all impact your hair and how suitable a particular shampoo or conditioner are. This is why we recommend adding a clarifying shampoo like Detox Dynamo to your regime, adding To The Rescue when the drying heaters come on in the winter and you need more moisture, or Colour Bomb when you add some va-va-voom with a new shade.

5. Want your hair to grow faster? Sleep with itloose.Your hair grows at the rate it grows – on average half an inch per month. The fact in this myth is that tying the hair back tightly for an extended period puts it under tension. Tension = increased risk of weakness, snaps, splits and breakage that lead to thinner looking hair. If you sleep with your hair tied back, do it loosely, and reach for a gentle, fabric tie like a scrunchie.

6. Double shampooing is the route to clean hair.Mostly fact. If you’re washing your hair daily or more, there’s little point in a double cleanse. However, if you wash your hair less frequently, or you’ve used lots of styling product or a heavy treatment on it, or exposed it to lots of factors that lead to build-up, then double is for you. The first wash should be about removing the worst of the build-up, the second about deeply cleansing the hair and scalp.